Postwar Australia Research Articles

Wogs as work: humour as ethnic entrepreneurship and convivial labour

ABSTRACT In post-war Australia, the word ‘wog’ was used to describe the southern Europeans who dominated the mass migration schemes, particularly Italians and Greeks. The evolution of ‘wog’ from slur to celebration peaked in the 1990s, led by second-generation migrant comedians. This paper sets out the history of this evolution and the societal context in which ‘wog’ humour was invented in a uniquely ‘Australian’ way. Many of the cultural texts that make up the wog phenomenon have centred on themes of work and labour – from the original Wogs Out of Work to Pizza and Housos. This paper extends its consideration of labour in these works beyond themes in the content to argue that the act of ethnic humour is a form of convivial labour and ethnic entrepreneurship.

From forced to coerced labour: displaced mothers and teen girls in post-World War II Australia

ABSTRACT At the end of World War Two 1.2 million people were officially labelled Displaced Persons (DPs). Stateless, or refusing to return home, the majority were resettled in other countries including Australia which, like most receiving nations, saw these refugees primarily as a labour force for post-war economic recovery and expansion. However, unlike other nations, DPs destined for Australia signed a work contract which committed them to two years of assigned labour after arrival. This paper considers two specific subsets of these DPs, the ‘unsupported mothers’ (single, widowed, and divorced mothers with young children) and female unaccompanied teenagers. It illuminates the intersections of gender and displacement on the labour status of female DPs in post-war Australia and traces the continuities of coerced labour in their experiences of war and migration. We argue that the early life of female DPs in Australia provides an example of a continuum of forced and coerced labour which had begun under the shadow of war in Nazi Germany and continued after migration.

Building with hand and heart: The rebirth of do-it-yourself earth houses as environmental sentiment in post-war Australia

Building with hand and heart: The rebirth of do-it-yourself earth houses as environmental sentiment in post-war Australia

Imperial literacy, choice and F.W. Albrecht’s Lutheran experiments in Aboriginal education in post-war Central Australia

ABSTRACT This paper argues that Aboriginal children’s engagement with education in the central Australian region of the Northern Territory in the mid-twentieth century can be understood as strategic engagements with formal western education systems and assimilation policies. It addresses a methodological problem stemming from a project that focuses on the work of the Finke River Mission (FRM) and its head missionary Friedrich Wilhelm Albrecht who, during the 1950s and 1960s, initiated an education scheme that targeted ‘half-caste’ Indigenous girls living on pastoral stations in central Australia. The scheme demonstrates the key concern of this special issue in that it is an example of the entanglements of transnational forces with local expressions of Indigenous education in Australia.

Re-evaluating Post-war Interior Design Practices through Client Histories: Loti Smorgon and Her Architect/Decorator Noel Coulson

ABSTRACT In 1947 in Victorian Modern, Robin Boyd named a group of leading modern architects, including many who had trained at Geelong’s Gordon Institute. Yet Boyd omitted successful graduates whose work did not fit his narrowly defined parameters of modern design. Significant amongst these was Noel Coulson, RAIA, whose architecture and interior design practice made him highly desirable to Jewish immigrant clients. Like many whose work traversed both aesthetic and professional boundaries, Coulson has been overlooked by an Australian historical field profoundly shaped by Boyd’s preferences. Via a detailed study of Loti and Victor Smorgon’s Toorak house designed by Coulson in 1953, this paper argues that previously under-researched client histories have value in contesting such historiographical limitations. Client-centred methodologies reveal interior designers’ roles as hybrid practitioners — both cultural producers and mediators — supporting an understanding of modernity determined by the home as the locale of modern life rather than prescriptive aesthetic values. This paper proposes a re-assessment of post-war interior design historically marginalised within hierarchies of cultural production; and the role of the client as integral to a more inclusive understanding of the modern interior in post-war Australia.

Soil in the air

The post-war era of the 1940s is known for the birth of global governance, a time when Western nations united in efforts to reconstruct the war-torn world and reflected on the role of science in society. History and philosophy of science (HPS) was one of the early projects that emerged out of the war years. Diana (Ding) Dyason who headed the first HPS department in the southern hemisphere is honoured by this annual lecture, the text of which constitutes this article. Thomas Kuhn’s influential lecture in Oxford in 1961 inspired her work on the history of scientific entanglement with social concerns, and the directions of HPS at the University of Melbourne. Post-war reconstruction was both a local and a national project for every nation, very much in the air in the 1940s, and influential until the 1970s. The Australasian Association of Scientific Workers (AASW) brought together scientists too old to serve, or, in reserved occupations, to undertake their own ‘war effort’ on the question of: ‘What comes next?’ AASW held a planning conference in Sydney in 1944 to ‘formulate a policy on the organisation of science necessary to meet the demands of post-war Australia’. They set out to consider the role of the ‘the scientific method’ in the welfare of society. In particular, they recognised their existing international scientific networks and connections could become valuable for post-war collaborations between different sciences and different nations of benefit to Australia and the world. The idea of ‘the environment’ was one of many that emerged internationally in these ‘world-minded’ times, an idea that focused on the management of nature for the benefit of people using the scientific method. National Parks were a crucial discussion point, bringing together amateur naturalists and professional environmental managers of all sorts in discussions about landscape planning along with international comparative work on reserving places for wild animals and plants. This Dyason Lecture explores the emergence of ‘integrated science’, of science in the service of society, that later included natural resource management, big science, environmental science, earth systems science and climate science. It begins with the tragedy of the ‘dirty thirties’, when soil was in the air, and the scientific response to concerns about feeding the world.

Tempered Modernism: Karl Langer’s Architecture for the Lutheran Church in Queensland

ABSTRACT The Austrian émigré architect Karl Langer (1903–1969) was a major figure in the Queensland architecture scene after WWII. Among his work were two churches and one chapel for the Lutheran Church – St John’s in Bundaberg (1960), St John’s in Ipswich (1961) and St Peter’s College Chapel in Indooroopilly (1968). This paper sketches how a particular transfer of ideas and forms, across time and continents, informed these designs. Throughout his career, Langer endeavoured to combine the classicist principles he inherited from working with Peter Behrens, with his lifelong fascination for the civic culture of the ancient Greeks and contemporary international modernism. The harsh climate, poor economic situation and construction industry constraints in post-war Australia necessarily tempered Langer’s formal or intellectual intentions, though. This forced him to balance his personal ambitions and the agency of the Lutheran Church – seeking to foster its self-image as a progressive, outward-looking faith – against the scarcity of means and materials. Yet, as his church designs show, Langer managed to overcome these constraints thanks to a particular sensitivity to the spirit of place. This capacity gave his ecclesiastic designs a conceptual richness which made them stand out against the straightforwardness of most church architecture in post-war Queensland.

Tête-á-tête: Popular representations of the romantic dinner in post-war Australia

Abstract This article examines the notions of the romantic dinner in post-war Australia, using material culture in the form of Australian food writing and advertisements in cookbooks and popular magazines from the post-war period (in this case, 1945–68). It investigates three closely related aspects of the ‘romantic’ dinner for two: the similarities and contrasts between the courtship restaurant ‘date’ and a specially prepared dinner at home; the way in which gendered roles are performed, confirmed and contested in these events; and the influence of American advertising, and its promotion of American cuisine and lifestyle, on the way the domestic meal was conceptualized and presented to housewives at this time. Bearing in mind that the social importance of food is reinforced because its preparation occurs on a daily basis and that the informative power of food and the material culture around food production is as yet only partially tapped, this analysis attempts to answer the question: was the romantic dinner for two an opportunity for romance, or was it a creation that reinforced post-war gender roles in Australia?

Christina TwomeyThe Battle Within: POWs in Postwar Australia

Christina TwomeyThe Battle Within: POWs in Postwar Australia

“A Library of Photographs Covering the Entire Continent”: Walkabout Magazine and the Politics of Documentary in Post-War Australia

Spanning five central decades of the mid-twentieth century (1934–1974), Walkabout was one of Australia’s best-loved illustrated weeklies. Photography played a crucial role in the magazine’s attempt to represent the vast Australian continent and its neighboring countries. While historians and critics have regarded the magazine as an example of boosterish nationalism and middle-brow anti-intellectualism, I argue that the periodical should be considered as an amalgam of reactionary and progressive ideals: Walkabout was a paradoxical combination of high-modernism and romantic anti-capitalism, conservative nationalism and left populism. Although it glossed over many of the problems facing the country, the editors’ emphasis on “factual photography” was indicative of a democratic impulse. I offer an examination of the magazine’s coverage of extractive projects as an example of Walkabout’s ideological contradictions. In particular, I look at Laurence Le Guay and Robert Emerson Curtis’s 1947 photo-essay about the mining town of Mount Isa to show how the periodical attempted to reconcile two antagonistic gazes: that of the corporate engineer and that of the miner.

World Refugee Year 1959–60: Humanitarian Rights in Postwar Australia

In 1959, the United Nations (UN) proclaimed the year 1959–60 World Refugee Year (WRY). The aim of WRY was to urge members of the UN to focus on the issue of refugees in camps, provide additional financial support and foster humanitarian solutions to resettle refugees. In this article, I focus on the Victorian committee which was formed to oversee WRY activities, to consider the concept of ‘rights’, and its relationship to humanitarianism. Three arguments are advanced. First, moving beyond the polarisation between human rights and humanitarianism this article discusses the notion of humanitarian rights to capture the shifts taking place during the postwar period. Second, WRY illustrates techniques of modern humanitarian campaigning and fundraising, suggesting that compassion had to be generated. Finally, WRY provides a valuable opportunity to consider a key historic moment which throws into sharp relief a consideration of humanitarian rights in postwar Australia.

Review: The Battle Within: POWs in Post-war Australia by Christina Twomey

Review: The Battle Within: POWs in Post-war Australia by Christina Twomey

Her Majesty’s newest subjects: official attempts to assimilate non-English speaking migrants in post-war Australia

Following World War Two, Australia accepted large numbers of Europeans as part of a mass immigration program that would completely change the face of the nation. Key to the acceptance of these non-English speaking migrants was the policy of assimilation and the expectation that new arrivals would blend into the ‘Australian way of life’. Although learning English was a fundamental requirement to assimilation, so too was an understanding of Australian history and civics. This article examines the role of national events, the Jubilee of Federation, Queen Elizabeth II's Coronation and the 1954 Royal Tour in the attempted assimilation of new arrivals. It argues that the Department of Immigration looked to these events not only to assimilate migrants, but also to assist in the ‘conditioning’ of the Australian public towards the acceptance of this significant shift in immigration policy and the arrival of large numbers of non-English speaking migrants.

Migration Histories, National Memory, and Regional Collections

Migration Histories, National Memory, and Regional Collections

The Battle Within: POWs in Postwar Australia

The Battle Within: POWs in Postwar Australia

Constructing the "New Australian Patient": Assimilation as Preventative Medicine in Postwar Australia.

This article brings together historical questions about the nature of assimilation and the medicalization of migrants in the postwar era, with a focus on medical writings about migrant patients in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. It argues that physicians adopted official assimilation ideologies to construct a "New Australian patient" whose beliefs and behaviours indicated a less sophisticated understanding of medicine, and who suffered particular psychosomatic illnesses and health risks linked to their migration, socioeconomic status, and linguistic isolation. By making assimilation medical, these doctors helped bridge the cultural gulf that existed between Australian doctors and their migrant patients, but they also perpetuated cultural stereotypes through which certain unassimilable groups were blamed for their own medical problems.

Agency and ideology in language maintenance: Hungarian immigrants’ narratives on assimilationist post-war Australia

ABSTRACT This study explored stories of intergenerational language maintenance narrated by first- generation Hungarian immigrants in Australia. It sought an understanding of Hungarian immigrants’ positioning vis-à-vis their language ecology during the assimilationist post-war era of Australia. The narratives reveal that some families accepted the monolingual norms of using English in public spaces and gave in to the pressures of homogenising schools. However, in some families, agency was deployed to resist these normalising monolingual ideologies. These families had stronger intergenerational language maintenance of Hungarian. The findings of this research contribute to our understanding of the interactions between external factors (such as policy), and the subjective factors such as the individuals’ agency in managing language use in immigrant contexts. The study discusses the way ideologies were shaped and negotiated and highlights the benefits of using linguistic narratives to reveal variability within seemingly homogenous communities.

Intimate Oral Histories: Intercultural Romantic Relationships in Postwar Australia

This article examines the experiences of individuals in romantic relationships that crossed ethnic, religious or racial lines in post-World War II Australia. Using interviews from the Australian Generations Oral History Project, supplemented by archival and newspaper material, this article examines how broader changes in immigration and the cultural make-up of Australia in the second half of the twentieth century impacted individual Australians, influencing who they could desire, court and love. Through the narration of intimate life stories, this article attempts to capture the emotional experience of individuals whose relationships, while made possible by national policy decisions, still tested and breached social norms and cultural expectations at the personal and familial level.

Unknown Anzacs: The Politics and Performance of Bodily Repatriation in Postcolonial State Formation

This article explores the politics and performance around the repatriation of the Unknown Australian Soldier (1993) and the Unknown New Zealand Warrior (2004). A comparison of the ‘Unknown Anzacs’ with the return of Indigenous bodily remains from overseas jurisdictions – drawing on the cases of Aboriginal leader and resistance fighter Yagan in the 1990s and Māori toi moko over the 2000s – reveals the complex politics of legitimacy and authority derived from the act of bodily interment. Mobilising both a postcolonial and a transnational framework, this paper shows how acts of repatriation expressed imagined worlds, and made apparent hidden relationships in the unsettled polities of postwar Australia and New Zealand, thus rendering them material in the nation. These transportations also reveal state involvement in violence and death and its role as perpetrator along with its responsibilities to victims and their communities.

Introduction: Trauma and its Histories in Australia

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 Mark S. Micale, “Toward a Global History of Trauma”, in Psychological Trauma and the Legacies of the First World War, edited by Jason Crouthamel and Peter Leese (New York: Palgrave, 2017). 2 Ibid., 289. 3 Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman, The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood, translated by Rachel Gomme (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 284. 4 For a useful overview see Michael Robertson, Edwina Light, Wendy Lipworth, and Garry Walter, “The Contemporary Significance of the Holocaust for Australian Psychiatry”, Health and History 18, no. 2 (2016): 109–111. 5 Allan Young, The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 89–107. 6 Fassin and Rechtmann, 94–5. 7 Young, 111. 8 See for example Bruce Boman, “The Vietnam Veteran Ten Years On”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 16 , no.3 (1982): 107–27; Wayne Hall and Donald McPhee, “Do Vietnam Veterans Suffer from Toxic Neurasthenia?”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 19, no. 1 (1985): 19–29; Jan Westerink and Leah Giarratano, “The Impact of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder on Partners and Children of Australian Vietnam Veterans”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 33, no. 6 (1999): 841–7. 9 See Beverley Raphael, “Editorial Comment: Psychiatric Consultancy in Major Disaster”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 18 (1984): 303–06; Beverley Raphael , “Psychosocial Aspects of Disaster: Some Australian Studies, and the Ash Wednesday Bushfires”, Medical Journal of Australia, 141, no. 5 (1984): 268–9. See also Alexander C. McFarlane, “The Ash Wednesday Bushfires in South Australia: Implications for Planning for Future Post-Disaster Services” The Medical Journal of Australia 141(5) (1984): 286–291 and Paul Valent, “The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria”, Medical Journal of Australia 141, no. 5 (1984) : 291–9. The conclusions drawn from these experiences were applied in the aftermath of the Bali bombings and the Black Saturday bush fires. See Garry J. Stevens, Julie C. Dunsmore , Kingsley E. Agho, Melanie R. Taylor, Alison L. Jones, and Beverley Raphael, “Coping Support Factors among Australians Affected by Terrorism: 2002 Bali Bombings Survivors Speak”, Medical Journal of Australia 199, no. 11 (2013): 772–5; and Richard A. Byrant, Elizabeth Waters, Lisa Gibbs, et al., “Psychological Outcomes Following the Victorian Black Saturday Bushfires”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 48, no. 7 (2014): 634–43. 10 Bruce S. Singh, “The Long-term Psychological Consequences of Disaster”, Medical Journal of Australia 145 (1986): 555–6. 11 On World War II veterans see Malcolm A. Kidson, John C. Douglas, and Brendan J. Holwill, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Australian World War II Veterans Attending a Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic”, Medical Journal of Australia 158, no. 8 (1993): 563–6. For examples of renewed medical attention to POWs see D.C. Hinden, “Prisoners of War: Long-term Effects”, Medical Journal of Australia 11, no. 1 (1981): 565–6; Ian L. Duncan, “Life in a Japanese Prisoner -of-War Camp”, Medical Journal of Australia 7, no. 1 (1982): 302–06; Kerry L. Goulston, Owen F. Dent, Pierre H. Chapuis, et al., “Gastrointestinal Morbidity among World War II Pris- 9 oners of War: 40 Years on”, Medical Journal of Australia 143, no. 1 (1985): 6–10; Christopher Tennant, Kerry Goulston, and Owen Dent, “Australian Prisoners of War of the Japanese: Postwar Psychiatric Hospitalisation and Psychological Morbidity”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 20, no. 3 (1986): 334–40; Ian P. Burges Watson, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Australian Prisoners of the Japanese: A Clinical Study”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 27, no. 1 (1993): 20–9. 12 Christina Twomey, The Battle Within: POWs in postwar Australia (Sydney: NewSouth, 2018), 213–40; Christina Twomey, “Trauma and the Reinvigoration of Anzac”, History Australia 10, no. 3 (2013): 85–108. 13 See Elizabeth D. Paratz and Benny Katz, “Ageing Holocaust Survivors in Australia”, Medical Journal of Austrlaia 194, no. 4 (2011): 194–7; Paul Valent, “Holocaust Traumatology in Australia ”, Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 16, no. 3 (2010): 95–111. Valent argues that this may be because ‘Australian Jewry...